Mildred Latham's thoughts drifted from Sidney Wyeth for a time, and reverted to her own life, and that of her father, who was a preacher. Soon, they wandered back to Sidney, to his life of Hell--the work of an evil power--the torn soul upon its rack of torture--and finally the anguish--always the anguish, followed by the dead calm of endless existence. Yet during their acquaintance, he never spoke of the past. No word of censure, or of unmanly criticism, passed his lips. So Mildred Latham could feel in a measure relieved, for she had secrets,--and she kept them all to herself, too. Directly, she shook off the depression, and rose to her feet. "It is all settled," she said half aloud, and, going to her trunk, laid the book in the tray, lifted the latter out, and, reaching to the bottom, took up a small steel box and set it on the dresser. She then inserted a small key, opened it, and took therefrom a heavy, legal document. Examining it for a time, she put it into her hand bag, locked the box, returned it to its place, replaced the tray and locked the trunk again. This done, she slipped into a street suit, and, gathering up the handbag firmly, left her room, locked the door, stepped into the street, and caught a car that took her up town, where she alighted before a mammoth office building. She entered this, took an elevator and got off on the twentieth floor, entering the office of a prominent law firm. This visit had been pre-arranged. An hour later, she left a large bank on the ground floor, returned to her room, took the box from her trunk, and replaced, not the legal document, but a long, green slip of paper. "All is now settled on that score," she whispered drearily, and then busied herself mechanically about the room. Again she fell into that fit of meditation. She could not--try as she might--shake off the despondency. And always, in the background somewhere, lurked Sidney Wyeth. Was this because she felt she would never see him again? She couldn't, she knew, as she recalled her secret. Suddenly she threw herself weakly across the bed, and sobbed for hours. "Sidney, my Sidney," a careful listener might have heard her lips murmur. But she was alone. Perhaps that made it so hard, for she was alone now, always alone. At last she got up and bathed her face, as she had done many times before. Always, too, she had a presentiment down in her heart, that somewhere or somehow, some day fate would be kind and send him again into her life. And then would she be ready? O that persistent question! Now Mildred Latham was not a weak woman. Far from it. In spite of the secret, which was ever _her burden_, she was not the kind to give up without struggle. This was perhaps the cause, in a degree, of the suffering she endured. It was this sorrow which Sidney Wyeth had observed, and wished to dispell. "If I could only have permitted him to do so," she said, so many, many times. But always _The Barrier_.